While Rick darts off, Khond examines the ring briefly before shrugging, putting it on, and following after Rick.  Seeing the narrow passage, though, he opts not to block any retreat.

Rick pokes himself in the chest, watching carefully... The doll doesn't seem to have a weapon, and nothing really seems to happen? Then again, maybe a "poke" doesn't really count as an attack. Or at least something one would be able to notice.

Khond in the meantime puts on the ring. There's a strange sensation as he does, but nothing seems to happen. It might take some time..?

When Oren hears Breldo mutter about mirrors, again trying to explain magic away as nothing, he walks over to the man, "No Breldo, we cannot say that anymore.  Magic obviously exists.  We need to accept that.  And embrace it!   Look at Sylvia.  She's amazing and can fly.  Remember Comedy and what he could do.  The Ship where we first met.  That ship should not have been there or existed.  It came from nowhere.  The music we heard on the ship!"   He takes a breath and continues, "Magic apparently used to be all over the world by how Sylvia and Comedy talked.   We need to find a way to bring more of it back that just the little bit we have seen.  Can you imagine how amazing that could make things?"

In his excitement of pushing the magic agenda on Breldo he doesn't notice Rick leave, unless pointed out by someone else.

Rick shrugs and, looks over his shoulder at Khond.

"Rick will try to go over the little thing."

Rick will then proceed to try and squeeze by the big doll.

"Rick doesn't want to fight Paladin. Rick just wants to get past."

As Rick gets closer, crossing the short hallway with nothing untoward happening, he does find the actual part of trying to squeeze by initially far, far more difficult than it should. It's like there is an invisible force- Whenever he pushes against it, it's like it pushes back, and it makes it nigh impossible to squeeze by.

But something he can do, at least, that most others wouldn't, is just... Climb over with help of the wall. And to that, there seems to be no counter from this 'paladin', assuming he wants to drop into the section right behind it.

"Rick will just...no. Rick just needs to... huh. Okay well Rick will go over Paladin."

Rick would absolutely climb over the wall and drop down behind the paladin.

Rick drops behind the "paladin", cutting himself off from the others unless they find another way to pass. With the exception of Silvia perhaps, but she seems rather hesitant about flying so much deeper in.

And as he enters this second section of hallway, it only takes a moment for another "doll" to appear. This one seems to be carrying a mandolin, as the voice again speaks.

"A bard is I, and I shall dance with thee! My song plays on a constant beat!" 

It only just finishes talking before there is a sudden blast- Some kind of shockwave that surrounds this puppet that he can feel from all the way across the room. If he stands too close to it when it goes off, it will most certainly hurt.

"Bard? Rick thinks Bard's song should have rhymed."

Rick gauges if he can climb over the bard and waits to see if there is any actual pattern to the booms.

"Bard, to be honest this is not what Rick was expecting when Rick went down fiction. Rick has seen plenty of non-violent towards Rick fiction."

Rick could probably repeat the same trick, the cloth puppets are the same size. But as he gets closer to investigate, the doll moves as well. 

((What about the booming? Any more of that?

And presumably it didn't reply?))

The mannequin still has that shockwave emanating from it every few seconds in a regular pattern. If he were to count it, the timing is about six seconds, a completely arbitrary number. It seems that the moment he walked a bit deeper in the hallway, it came closer to him. 

It also didn't respond to his voice. It must not like the criticism. It's been down here how long, and couldn't even think of a rhyming spell?

Rick tries to see behind the doll and starts backing up to see if it backs up. He'll see if it follows up the wall when he climbs as well.

Behind the doll, there's the narrow passageway before another one of these shorter hallway "segments", and at the very end of that stands the pedestal with the prize. But soon Rick "dances" with this bard. When he moves back, the doll also moves back. When he moves left, the doll moves right. Well, from his perspective, the doll is also moving left if you consider it's facing him. Annoyingly, when he tries to scale the wall, it mimics that as well... Albeit it by the stick from the floor that is propping it up simply extending to be higher.

Rick looks at the floor to see the limits of the prop up stick's forward and backward movement potential.

He'll also ask Khond,

"Friend Khond? Can Khond shoot Bard? In the stick?"

With the nature of the narrow passageways between each section, and that paladin still blocking the first one, it seems impossible for Khond to get off a proper shot. 

((Stick question?))

(sorry!)

Rick tries to look at the floor to better see where this stick person could and could not go... But honestly, there's no indication in the floor of there being any kind of mechanism in the first place. From what he can see from a safe distance without risking getting shockwaved, it seems like the blending into the floor just... Kind of shifts wherever it's going. But given the entire floor is the same, at least this entire section seems like it should be a go?

The majority of the group seems to remain idling in the "Comedy" hall, for various reasons. Asimi seems to be kind of scowling, considering whether or not she should be trying to ask other questions to this mask, or stage, or whatever was even talking, before taking a sudden pause.

"That Tabaxi seems to have run off for a while now."

"Yeah, let us go find Rick.  He is prone to acting first, and that might get him in trouble again."  He makes sure the others move on too, prodding them along if needed.

((Can Rick possibly time the blasts or are they more less battle constant?))